Join Host Mark McDonald on Thursday, June 11th from 6:30-10 p.m. as he hosts a live edition of The Best of Illinois Stories. You can call 217-483-7887 to pledge your support for this program during that time!

Network Knowledge/WQEC/PBS Quincy is scheduling the next On the Road With Illinois Stories Bus Trip from Quincy. The bus will depart from the CVS Pharmacy at 436 N. 30th at 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, June 24, 2015, and return around 5:00 p.m. Please park in the southwest corner of the parking lot.

The bus trip will include stops at the following:

* Four Winds Farm (an organic herb and vegetable farm where we will get a presentation on growing and cooking/using herbs);
* Old Tymers Village and the Lewis Round Barn at the Adams County Fairgrounds;
* Brickman’s Collectors Paradise in Ursa;
* M&M Shrimp Shack, where we will tour the state’s newest shrimp farming operation.
* The Quincy-Adams County History Museum, which has just opened to the public at its new location.
* Arrive back in Quincy at CVS around 5:00 p.m.

The cost is $60.00 per person. This includes all admissions, tours and lunch. Past bus trips have sold out quickly, so you might want to send in your reservation as soon as possible. Please call MJ at 800/232-3605, ext. 222 to make your reservation with a credit card, or mail your check and information to: On the Road With Illinois Stories Bus Trip, Attn: MJ Bates, PO Box 6248, Springfield, IL 62708.

We will be shooting an Illinois Stories on the trip that will be aired on Network Knowledge, and copies will be available for purchase.

In this new portion of our Cardia program, we sit down with heart health experts in studio for a Q&A session.

Episode 1: Our Guest is Dr. Jeff Christie, Cardiothoracic Surgeon. We have a seat in the Operating Room as he performs cardiac bypass surgery and treats the patient's arrhythmia.

Episode 2: Our guest is Dr. Kriegh Moulton, cardiologist. We are in the catheterization lab with him as he implants a pacemaker and defibrillator.

Episode 3: Our guest is Dr. Jeff Goldstein, cardiologist, and our topic is Peripheral Vascular Disease, which usually presents with leg pain. This leg pain is caused by the same issues that cause heart disease.

We are accepting questions from viewers for our live, in-studio taping of Cardia: In Any Given Week on Monday, April 13, 2015. What do you want to know more about? We need your questions by noon on Monday.

A woman attacked as a college student and the man she accused (and helped mistakenly convict of the crime) now make appearances together across the county speaking against injustice and for atonement and eyewitness-identification-procedure reform.

Jennifer Thompson, who was assaulted as a 22-year-old Elon College student in 1984, and Ronald Cotton, who spent 11 years in prison for the crime until DNA evidence cleared him, will be special guests at the 8th Annual Defenders of the Innocent event to benefit the Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois Springfield on April 8. It is the Innocence Project’s major fundraiser.

After years of trying, we finally have a direct programming feed to Comcast in Macomb (WMEC). The main channel, World, & Create will all be on the cable system in Macomb 24 hours a day. Until this time, they had been taking our over-the-air signal and putting it on cable which meant when we signed off at night the cable channels went dark.

It is the longest running war in human history. Fought with razor-sharp scalpals, invisible rays, and lethal poisons, its battlegrounds are deep within the human cell. Its casualties number in the hundreds of millions – nearly one in two men, and one in three women will fight cancer directly; nearly all of us will feel its collateral damage. The story of the war on cancer spans centuries and continents. It is a scientific story, but also a deeply human one: of doctors, researchers, and patients who through courage, suffering, and occasional hubris pushed the boundaries of knowledge.

These people helped define cancer as the scourge of the modern age, and then mobilized the federal government and private industry to wage an all-out campaign against it – a campaign we are still fighting. Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Siddhartha Mukherjee, tells the complete story of cancer, from its first appearance in the fossilized remains of dinosaurs to the gleaming laboratories of modern research institutions.

At six hours, the film interweaves a sweeping historical documentary; with intimate profiles of current patients; and an investigation into the latest scientific breakthroughs that may have brought us, at long last, to the brink of effective treatments. Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies is directed by Barak Goodman and Executive Produced by Ken Burns, who is also the senior creative consultant. The film is...